


Odds

by Maggie_Nowakowska



Series: Masters of the Game: Lando Calrissian [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 08:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7260136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maggie_Nowakowska/pseuds/Maggie_Nowakowska
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Odds” could be a monologue offered by a loquacious (or in his cups) Lando Calrissian to someone who has asked him about his younger years and how he came to be a gambler.  It could be a private reflection, a consideration for his memoirs. There may be some exaggeration here, some arch dramatization, but we all know that whatever Lando does, he means to do with style.</p><p>Lando Calrissian’s age or background was not known when this vignette was written in the early 1990s.<br/>I chose to give him a few years on Han Solo, making this...</p><p>A Young(er) Lando Calrissian story.</p><p>“Odds” was written in 1991, before there were many pro SW books, let alone a large Extended Universe (and, this is not an Extended  SW Universe story).  It was written when any action, any history, any relationships that were not shown or mentioned in the first three SW movies were invented by and for fans alone.  In their stories, fan writers sometimes incorporated hints, clues, suggestions, and speculations in interviews, in articles, or books written about the SW phenomenon, but the movies were the only "canon" that we had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odds

 

You learned to gamble early living in my Maman's House.  

My uncles laid odds as easily as they breathed: What courses would be served at the High Season feasting?  Whose nephew would sit secretary to the Elders next session?  Which clan might win the right to send their Maman’s choice as next Senator to Coruscant, the city-world, the center of civilization?

A subject’s severity or lack of it, made no difference to my uncles.  Any occasion that demanded ranking — the simple ordering of a list — was cause enough for a wager.  

My aunties preferred dice, the turn of a wrist, graceful and well-measured.

I learned my math through the laying of odds.  I secured my place in our Maman's affection by laying them correctly.

She promised, should I also learn finesse and gentle speech, that one day, in our House I would be an uncle to many. As my Maman's nieces were lovely — if rarely seen by a thirteenth-summer boy — I was certain that my future would contain much satisfaction.  When my sixteenth summer came and the Elder Houses gathered, my Maman called me up to stand as 2nd Adjunct at her side. That year, that season, much to my delight, my Maman’s nieces began to ask for me by name.

My name was different then.

 

It was later in that year, another Capitol reception, when an uncle of our House burst into the Hall.  He wore the Badge of Security; he had the right to interrupt.  Still, he paused; he caught his breath.  He made a gracious bow and bent one knee.  With shining eyes and sweet elation, he announced the happy news that the galactic wars were over!  Four long years of anxiety were finished.  Our home world was secure!

I was honored to be chosen to stand behind our Maman when, at mid-day dinner, every Elder and each House blessed and toasted Socorra’s senator, our Maman’s own senator, our uncle, who with wit and ingenuity had played a balanced hand in the deadly game of war.  Odds had been calculated and beaten; our obscurity, maintained.  Never invaded by Separatists, Socorra never needed to be saved by the Republic; a difference that, it was said, had become no difference at all.

 

It was later in the afternoon, with the assembly session ending and the Elders standing, stretching, that our uncle reappeared.  He stopped in center hall. He made no bow, bent no knee.  He threw his arms out wide and cried, “The Republic is undone!  An Empire has been proclaimed!”

He caught his breath; I saw him waver.  With pain in his voice, he told the Houses that our senator, his staff, would not be coming home from Coruscant alive.

He caught his breath again; he looked straight at our Maman.  “This new Empire,” he reported, “demands to know who chose Socorra’s representatives.  The Empire requires that the clan whose Children served our senator come forward, come to Coruscant, to explain its brash resistance to Imperial good order.”

Our uncle, one of our Security, paused.  He added, “On its own, or under guard.”

For ten years, Socorra's senator (our Maman whispering in his ear, watching from afar, not liking what she saw) had wagered our neutrality — choosing no sides, friendly with all — hoping to continue too small to be important.  When the wars were finished, when the playing fields cleared of enemies without, the Empire turned its eye on enemies within and took notice of who among the cheering crowds had no record of approval, no flag of loyalty to wave.

The Elders turned their backs on our House, our Maman’s clan and Children.  The Elders ordered us to leave, advised us to surrender for the safety of Socorra.  They said, “Go now, before anyone is compromised."  They meant, _Go quick and quiet, before anyone can know what you must do or where you’ve gone._

That evening I heard my lady mother cry. My lord uncle, the man who placed a pridepack in my cradle in thanks for her birthing labor, would not be coming home from Coruscant alive.

“A pity,” our Maman said in a nighttime full of chaos. _“_ A pity,"she complained to my aunts, and to my uncles, “that this boy’s talent is too young, has come too late, to ask for accurate odds on surviving our objection to the war.  For the odds that we might have misunderstood the playing of the game.”

We fled the capitol, my Maman and her Children who survived the local vultures and Imperial assassins.  Fled, and for a while were hidden from our enemies by clans that could — that would — find for us some shelter in little-used summer lodges; on landed estates long-forgotten; among empty holdings, old investments, anywhere without contact with anyone who mattered.

We moved often.  Playing decks required no power, no elaborate luggage to carry forward.  One deck; one man's pocket.  One memory per uncle of a life wherein the skills and temper to play games were gallant virtues for a galactic man of means.

In each sanctuary we found, my uncles’ debts accumulated, my aunts’ plots grew more elaborate.  They played and planned while local banks cleared our Maman’s vouchers, and when the banks stopped giving, we moved again, traveling in the dark, all for our Maman’s pride. 

 

Soon enough, the jewelry was melted, the droids deconstructed for the precious metals they contained.  Soon enough, small heirlooms hidden in private packs and pockets transformed into whatever currency the keepsakes took at pawn.

Not all the glittering trinkets came back in silver slices.  Too many cousins slipped away with the cash their booty bought.  My cousins faded into street life, space life, no-one-knows-who-I-am life.  To what ends, I’ve ever learned.

I was not sent on such chores in those slow and dying days.  I was my Maman's favorite child, shining with my lady mother's grace amid the pain and squalor.  When our fortunes turned, when the Assembly relented, when the Elders called us home, she promised I would be her Jewel, our Maman’s choice, standing strong and proud at my Maman's side.  

 

Our life was not sustainable.  Discretion proved insufficient.  Gossip reached our Maman, whispers from the Capitol warning that certain clans and Houses were seeking favor with the Emperor.  He had not forgotten our disinterest. We fled Socorra.  Among the stars, on a minor moon, we lived in exile amid distant kin who mined for calris iron, who had syndicate connections, outlaws, not interested in any Imperial attention.  

And still my uncles wagered; when too many cards were mislaid or lost, they simply shuffled decks together.  And still my aunties schemed, plotting that unraveled as surely as did my finely threaded clothes.  

My lady mother altered coats and vests and trousers as I grew until the sleeves and seams and hems could not survive another fitting.  Then, even my Maman's Jewel dressed down to match my cousins.  A worker’s shirt and leggings; a miner’s belt, vest and boots, were sufficient for anyone to make it through a day.

My lady mother sighed to see me so plain before my Maman's nieces, but by then my Maman's nieces were not so very many.  They, too, disappeared, into and out of port, and up among the stars where the future, if not so pretty as a Jewel, gripped Imperial credits in its purse.

Still, I played along. For Maman's promises.  For my lady mother’s heart.  For my aunties’ futile planning and for all my uncles' dreams.

 

One morning, barely dawn, my Maman called me to her suite.  Quickly, quietly, she pulled me through her door.  In her parlor, on a table, lay a cloak and traveling satchel.  I looked closer; behind the two, lay my long forgotten pride-pack, held fast through all the moves.  

I was eighteen, my Maman told me, man enough and clever.  My skills would serve me well, my Maman promised. Then she blessed me with hard metal, hidden away against disaster, my inheritance held out now to quicken my dismissal.

“Leave this dreaming,” our Maman said, “take your good luck and work it hard.”  She led me through her rooms to her private outside entrance.  The door opened.  She waited. 

I stepped outside. 

“Change your name.  Forget.  Go away,” our Maman told me.

I kept on walking.

“Go far, far away,” my Maman whispered after me.

 

Or, maybe I misremember.  Maybe that hard-rock moon was the last beggar's palace I could stand.  Maybe I took my pack, took my Maman’s secret cache as winnings long years earned.  Maybe I followed my cousins, all the lovely nieces, a fool for having stayed and played so very long.  

I was my Maman's love and Jewel; I may be imagining the push she gave me.

I was my Maman's favorite nephew; it may be my own delusion to think that I chose to leave at all.

In any case, I fled.  I took what I little I could carry in my pack and in my heart: a change of clothes, a purse of cash, my lady mother's smile; my uncles’ and my aunties’ skills; my Maman's wit and will.

So I could not forget, I took the name of that last-chance mine and moon as my own.

 

 _Pleased to meet you!  Calrissian’s the name.  My friends call me Lando.  What’s your pleasure at the game?  Cards?  I’m your man.  Dice?  Yes, indeed._ _What odds?  Friend, if you have to ask, you should not be in the play._

 

###

 

**Author's Note:**

> “Odds” is also an introduction to two longer Lando Calrissian stories to be posted soon:  
> “Alyeska Wild Cards” (1992) about how Lando lost the MILLENNIUM FALCON, and ”Masters of the Game: A General Engagement” (1995) about what happens when Lando plays cards with a woman who has out-maneuvered Emperor Palpatine for over twenty years. 
> 
> Original publication:  
> Maggie Nowakowska. “Odds.” In Bright Center of the Universe (fanzine). Soaring Wings Press. 1991.
> 
> Revised and updated, June 2016 by Maggie Nowakowska.


End file.
